I have tried to be helpful. If I am guilty of anything here, that's it. Because my advice sometimes deviates from what seems to be dogmatic law, I have had my intellect and my systems insulted. For the life of me, I can't understand why this has to be.

I got my hal working through this particular forum. It wasn't until I installed an initrd that I could access my root drive via konqueror. With a non-smp kernel, same story. Non-smp=no-work. Review the thread. Tell me I'm lying!

So forgive me if I assume that doing it the way I was told here, in this forum, after a few weeks worth of debate as to whether or not initrd was needed, got my systems working. Any normal person would assume that because the computer started working after I took the steps laid down in this thread, that perhaps, just perhaps, the information was correct.

Now, all of a sudden, months after the fact, months after setting up an SMP kernel and an initrd made my system work fully, it seems that all this information HERE IN THIS THREAD was incorrect. I don't know when the worm turned, but it's immaterial at this point. I am no longer running Slackware, and I am supposing I'm not going to reinstall it again on any machines I own or will own.

Someone in the Gentoo forum put it best. The true differences between Linux distros is small...and from what I have seen, tend to be in the nature of how one puts programs onto the system. K3b works as well under Gentoo as it does under Slackware, and Debian. All distros dip from the same well when it comes to the actual programs running once we get past the log in screen.

The only real difference in distros is the community. It can be seen that the community here has a problem with me. I don't know why. I have never actively tried to damage another's machine. I have never actively forced anyone to do anything I have done with my machines...and yet, there is strife, and lots of it.

I get told it's because my "misinformation" is damaging to the newbie. But somehow, flaming someone is ok...and that doesn't bother newbies in the least.

Whatever!

At one time, I had a triple boot machine, DOS/Win3.11-Slackware circa 1994, and OS/2 warp...and you know, for a 486DX2/66, that system worked pretty well. And, I set it up without the assistance of a community. Hell, I didn't even know there were communities dedicated to Linux until a few years ago.

So, while you may think my info was or is bad, the fact that my Slack-12 stayed operational while I was:
a) running as root
b) using "make headers_install"
c) compiling programs against a supposedly broken glibc,
AND remained operational until I decided to get rid of it in favor of Gentoo speaks volumes about either my luck, or my ability to make something work by blazing my own trail.

In any case, I grow weary of dealing with the sniping I have to endure when I am here. So, barring anyone asking me a direct question, I'll just no longer come around.

It has been made clear by many that I am not welcome here. Therefore, until such time as I am asked a question, I'm gone. Y'all are welcome to drag my name, my intellect, and my systems through the mud as much as you want. If this is the caliber of behavior I can expect in the future, I want no part of it.

And if you were insulted by not having me bless you, consider how insulted I was when you more or less called me a liar.

Whatever!

Bye!

Pappy

This sticky has become so polluted, just take a look at the tags 'boring, error, slackware, 120, install, make, installer, stopitallofyou, notagain, cockroach'.

Hi,

I agree the sticky has gotten convoluted but there is still a lot of good information. A user will just have to know what to use or not use. I guess that defeats the intent of the sticky.

After reading 'pappy's' post and remembering the problems between him and me in the past. I have seen some attacks that were warranted or baited, I'm not sure which here. He does tend to take everything literal and as a personal attack. I think most of the problem here and other posts within the Slackware LQ forum are just communication. He has some valid points of issue while some of the others are just out somewhere in the 'Star Trek' universe.

One point that he seems to reiterate is the validity of respondent statements to his posts. I think that I too fall into that trap. If edits/creation are not proper for a post that I respond too are not correct. Then when I re-read the post after a time frame then the post that I had made previously were not necessarily what I had intended to communicate. Call it a 'Brain fart' or Freudian slip but just not writing what I'm thinking. Or not formulating properly during the creation.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not defending anyone. Just making another point of view.

Blessed Begone!

Just a quick 2 cents here:

I just did a fresh install of SW12 one Christmas night (MASSIVE hard drive failure!).

I installed XPSP2 on my hda1 (ntfs), data on hda2 (fat32), SW on hdb1, hdb2, hdb3, and swap on hdb4 (gotta love a 320GB drive)

I used reiserfs for all my linux drives (except swap), and, lo and behold, even with hal/dbus going full force, I did not (nor did I need to) setup an initrd. It just boots right up.

I always put my people (users) in the correct groups (except myself once, forgot to add myself to "video" and as such, my camera wouldn't work...Doh!). Andding them to plugdev and cdrom is a basic step I always take (kids on the computer too. They gotta get their mp3 players and cd's working...)

No hal issues. No issues mounting anything. (I did have a issue trying to get DLG installed, but that was a borked SW12-CD1 that didn't kill the install. Re-burned CD1, wiped the drive, reinstalled, and no problems after that)

Why no mounting/hal issues? Because I read the docs for 12 before I installed.
Why did I read the docs? Because the basic Linux mantra (no matter the distro), is: RTFM!

Oh, for God's sake, is this thread still going? My goodness. cwwilson721, you didn't need an initrd because you are using the huge kernel (which I would recommend against but will work if you set it up properly, ie blacklisting stuff. Although everything may work now with the huge kernel sometimes devious problems pop up because of blacklisting issues...but if you're content to use it, go for it. I have warned you (and so has Pat)). If you read the thread or the countless others, you would realize that it is 100% REQUIRED to use an initrd if you are using the generic-smp kernel. No bones about it.

In addition, if you want to access the root partition using Konqueror through the ridiculous partition interface that I think is less intuitive than just typing "/" or through other methods, you also need an initrd (pappy seems to have come under fire for this, but he is indeed correct). I've stated my opinion on the matter a LONG time ago -- it is STUPID to worry about this feature unless you have become so used to it that you can't live without it. If you NEED this feature, make an initrd. And no, I'm not stupid enough to suggest creating an initrd when using the huge kernel -- that would be stupid. If you want this stupid feature, use a generic kernel (which I would recommend anyway, although not specifically for that feature) and create an initrd (REQUIRED if you use the generic kernel because the filesystems are created as modules). Did I say "stupid" enough?

I don't know where the suggestion for smp being required from HAL came (maybe it was mentioned earlier on, I can't remember -- I just read from my last post forward), but no, I don't believe you need an smp-enabled kernel for HAL (however, Pat states that there should be no problems running an smp-enabled kernel on most uniprocessor hardware, although this is not necessary).

As for HAL issues, it's been a while since I read this thread, but I never had HAL issues either (it worked right out of the box). I also read the notes before installing Slackware 12.0 (a long time ago now) and I didn't even need to think twice about HAL because it just worked anyway. However, if you DO run into HAL issues, through your fault or other, this thread has some great suggestions.

I really cannot believe this discussion is still going. Give it a rest. If anyone wants to debate the initrd issue (which is actually completely unrelated to HAL and really should never have been brought up in this thread, but is nonetheless answered here), read the ENTIRE thread and you'll see hard evidence. An initrd is only necessary if you use the generic kernel (which I would recommend unless you compile your own), and not with the huge kernel. However, you won't be able to access the root partition through media:/ in Konqueror (which I think is pointless anyway, but...) unless you create an initrd and use the generic kernel (or compile your own kernel WHILE MAKING SURE TO COMPILE THE FILESYSTEM AS A MODULE and then CREATING AN INITRD). I don't understand what more could possibly be added (or debated) about this topic. As far as I'm concerned, many people were out of line. Pappy -- if you're still reading this -- Slackware 12.0 DOES work out of the box. You chose some odd options (like running as root, and other such stuff, which is fine but not normal) which made it difficult to identify the root (no pun intended) of the problem. However, I and others worked hard to get everything working on your system -- and as far as I can tell everything ended up working (whether or not you later switched to Gentoo). I must add again that EVERYTHING worked 100% out-of-the-box with Slackware 12.0 for me after reading Pat's notes and subsequently installing it. It's not a broken distro -- it was most likely a PEBCAK issue (and that's NOT meant as an insult -- we've all had those. I had a heck of a time trying to configure compiz because I missed installing one small package [not that I use compiz anymore anyway, but still...]).

PLEASE let this thread die -- it no longer deserves to live. Believe it or not, pappy has helped out in this thread (and I'm sure most of us, him included, have given false info as well, although not on purpose). As far as I'm concerned every issue should be resolved. The only additions I would expect to this thread would be genuinely new issues about HAL and not any of the other off-topic discussions present in this thread.

If we use correctly adduser command (man), then we bypass this HAL "issue":
Am I right?

But, isn't 'adduser' only for adding new users ? I did at one point recommend using 'useradd', but Alien Bob said it was dangerous (it didn't harm my system any). I guess the only approved way is manually edit '/etc/group'.

The 'adduser' command is for adding new users, yes. It is the interactive form whereas 'useradd' is a non-interactive command.

It was the 'usermod' against which I warned sometime ago, because it requires that you know and use the list of groups currently assigned to the user when you add additional group(s) to the commandline. The danger lies in forgetting one or more of the current groups when you add a user to a new group, so that your user ends up with missing group memberships.

The correct way to proceed is to use the 'gpasswd' command. It will add a new group to the user's list of assigned groups.
Suppose I want to add the account "alien" to the "plugdev" group (a requirement to use the features of HAL properly), I would use this command to accomplish it:
Dead simple, and harmless.

Eric

I've previously advised against using kde's kuser interface for adding/modifying users, because it seems to not put a default shell in place for many people.

I've discussed it with one of the kde developers while here at the kde4 release event, and we *think* it's an issue of user error. The default selection for shell is "<Empty>" so if the user doesn't change that, guess what happens? The kde developer committed a patch last night to address it - the default selection should be changed to "/bin/bash" in kde-3.5.9, so hopefully that will solve the problem.

You mean

Yeah... I forgot the "-a" parameter indeed.

Eric

What it speaks to is your absolute undeniable ability to fail to learn from anyone. The following pretty much sums it up.

Point of fact: Linus Torvalds has said, many, many times, that the kernel headers in /usr/include/linux are there as an interface to glibc, and they should never be "upgraded" with the kernel. We cited you a URL that went to an article posted to LKML where Linus explained this in detail so you'd know we weren't making it up. You continue to ignore this (and the detailed explanations given by most of the responsible people on this forum) and act as if what you were doing was not fundamentally incorrect. If you can't learn about Linux kernel issues from the guy who wrote the Linux kernel then there truly is no hope for you.

So, if you're going to leave, then go because all you do here now is troll and whine and complain and derail threads with same and none of this is in the least useful or constructive.

Good summary, and you're right to call these points into question.

#1 is very much untrue. SMP support in the kernel is not required for HAL, nor is required for Slackware's build of HAL. I'd like to be able to cite a URL that says this explicitly, but it's not likely to happen because this is a bit like attempting to disprove a negative. I also hold little hope of finding a URL that says a nice gouda cheese is not necessary to make HAL function. These two things are just entirely unrelated.

#2 is also very much untrue. Whether an initrd is needed affects literally nothing else in the system. An initrd is needed as a temporary measure when the kernel boots, but does not have enough driver support to initialize the rest of the system--and in the case of most desktops, this means it's missing drivers for the primary fixed disks and/or controller and/or filesystem being used. That's really ALL there is to it. I'd like to make some point about there being a possibility that it could be a problem if one tries to start hald before the base hardware is initialized, but I think perhaps the amount of liquor needed for that might put me in the hospital. (Hint: No filesystem == no hald binary to start.)


After reading this if people want to buy gouda cheese, well then, it's their money. Just please no bug reports about your cheeses segfaulting, and we really don't need to hear success reports involving brie, either. It's very hard to "disprove" arguments that two utterly unrelated things are somehow dependent upon each other.

Post edit: Now having looked back to see who was making these absurd claims, I am not even a little bit surprised.

Thanks everyone who responded to my request for clarification of the 'SMP support' and 'initrd.gz' issues.

Apologies to anyone who thinks that this thread ahould have been left to rest.

Regardless of some of the heated exchanges in this thread, it remains a useful resource. A complete read is very educating on the issue of HAL.

Bill.

As long as one person is (actually) reading the thread and getting confused, then there could be (and probably are) several more people running around with the wrong idea entirely in their heads, which means a clarification is definitely in order until the confusion stops or drops to a reasonable level.